10-Year-Old Rape Survivor’s Baby Fathered By Uncle, Say Police

The 10-year-old rape victim, who gave birth to a baby girl in August, had been made pregnant by the younger brother of the uncle now in police custody on charges of raping her, police say. When the DNA test revealed he was not the baby’s father, the girl then told police her 38-year-old uncle had also abused her. The older uncle, believed to be in his 40s, was arrested earlier in the investigation when the girl pleaded to the Supreme Court in India to allow her to have an abortion.

The 38-year-old man was arrested in September, months after his older brother was accused of raping the girl, the BBC reported.

Police in the northern Indian city of Chandigarh will file charges against the second suspect, the younger brother of the uncle already charged with rape.

On July 28, the Supreme Court had dismissed a plea seeking its nod for terminating the 32-week-old pregnancy of the rape survivor after taking note of a medical report that abortion was neither good for the girl nor for the foetus. On September 11, HT had exclusively reported that the DNA report of the elder uncle was negative and that the “paternity of the accused was excluded” from the case.

Both uncles remain in police custody.

A court case against the first uncle is now underway.

The girl gave birth to a daughter via cesarean section August 18 at the Government Medical College and Hospital in Chandigarh.

Her father has asked that the child be made available for adoption.

The girl was not aware that she was going to hospital to deliver a baby but was instead told by her parents that she needed an operation to remove a stone from her stomach.

The girl initially told police the older uncle had raped and abused her months before she discovered she was pregnant in mid-July.

The girl’s case attracted global attention this summer after her parents asked the Supreme Court of India to allow her to have a late-term abortion. Abortions are illegal after 20 weeks of pregnancy in India, but the high court has granted a number of exceptions for young rape victims. According to reports, the family and doctors did not tell the young girl that she was pregnant.

The chairman of the team that treated the girl, Dr Dasari Harish, said: ‘As far as the girl is concerned, she is stable and will be kept in a separate room’.

In May, the high court allowed a 10-year-old from the northern state of Haryana who had been raped to abort her fetus at almost 21 weeks into the pregnancy.